Subject

Code JEL

URI

Collections

Métadonnées

Auteur

Moradi, Alexander

Cogneau, Denis

Type

Document de travail / Working paper

Nombre de pages du document

54

Résumé en anglais

When European powers partitioned Africa, individuals of otherwise homogeneous
communities were divided and found themselves randomly assigned to one coloniser.
This provides for a natural experiment: applying a border discontinuity analysis
to Ghana and Togo, we test what impact coloniser’s policies really made. Using
a new data set of men recruited to the Ghana colonial army 1908-1955, we find
literacy and religious beliefs to diverge between British and French mandated part
of Togoland as early as in the 1920s. We attribute this to the different policies
towards missionary schools. The British administration pursued a ”grant-in-aid”
policy of missionary schools, whereas the French restricted missionary activities.
The divergence is only visible in the Southern part. In the North, as well as at the
border between Ghana and Burkina Faso (former French Upper Volta), educational
and evangelization efforts were weak on both sides and hence, did not produce any
marked differences. Using contemporary survey data we find that border effects
originated at colonial times still persist today.